Scythe And Stem

21/12/2023

Next year’s Dusty Miller. Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s a great feeling to get excellent germination on a crop that I failed with the previous year. Every season, a little smarter…

11/12/2023

This wreath got me in trouble with Etsy, and now I know never to add a certain phrase that rhymes with “boppy bods” to my descriptions again… 😂

11/12/2023

Basement seed-sowing buddy…

10/12/2023

Spring 2024, let’s goooo

04/12/2023

Hyping myself up to divide the remaining dahlias by playing with this season’s dried flowers… Soon we’ll start sowing some of the slow-growing starts like lisianthus and eucalyptus - starting seeds has proven to be a solid antidote to the winter doldrums around here…

30/11/2023

A labor of love: So far we’ve divided and tucked away about 2/3 of our tubers in storage for next year. It’s a long process to dig and process tubers, one of the reasons that dahlias are so pricey. We think they’re well worth the effort…

29/11/2023

I cut this baby pink celosia (Flamingo Feather) off of my to-grow 2024 list, but now I’m not sure I can live without it.

26/11/2023

Just added a variety of 7 of these babes on our handmade page… We’ll be adding more inventory over the course of the week. https://scytheandstemfarm.etsy.com/listing/1620117809

18/11/2023

First purchase of hellebores are snuggled in. Can’t wait to cover the entire slope over the next few seasons… perennials are a big cost up front, but totally worth it once they’re established.

16/11/2023

Can’t wait to get these gorg hellebores planted in my pallet shade garden!

02/11/2023

The tulips are tucked in and ready to root for next spring. To maximize the use of our space, we’re growing in crates in the walking paths, and then will plant the crates with lilies after the tulips are pulled. 🖤

27/10/2023

Experimenting with utilizing sloped space and the myriad decaying pallets we have laying around these parts. This used to be a section of the landscape that stressed me out - now I’m going to plant it with ALL of the hellebores and astilbe, and it brings me great joy…

25/10/2023

It was a beautiful day to take the time to prep the kitchen garden with my favorite doing-stuff partner, . We are trying our hand at hugelkultur now that we’ve ripped up some really hideous astroturf and found a permanent home for our beds. The space between the beds will get filled with river stones.

24/10/2023

If you doubt your skills as a gardener and want to dip your toes into dahlia-growing, go with Blizzard. I bought 6 tubers 4 years ago, and now have hundreds, even after gifting some to family. In the crate are 18 tuber divisions that came from a single tuber planted last April. Tubers keep great and always come out of storage with sprouts ready to get growing. It’s the only snow-white dahlia I’ll probably ever grow - such a workhorse…

23/10/2023

It’s time to divide and conquer! We prefer to do this chore in the fall, because spring is so hectic, and it also makes storage easier. We chop our dahlia clumps into smaller divisions to store more easily, but if we can see an eye, we’ll cut down to individual tubers. They get packed into pine shavings, so the tubers/mini clumps don’t touch. This keeps air flow between them, and prevents the whole case from rotting if one goes bad. They then will go in our cold-but-not-freezing attic until spring. We’ve processed 10 crates thus far, and have 12 to go…

21/10/2023

Flowers for me, and seed-saving with my buddy from our celosia patch before we mow it down. We also tagged and cut back the overflow/random dahlia rows for digging, and harvested the broom corn to dry. The perfect fall day…

21/10/2023

17/10/2023

Dahlias are sooooo last season. It’s not on-brand for me to have cleared space ready to plant as my shipment of tulips is on the way. Is this what it feels like to be kinda professional? 😂

17/10/2023

Stopped to admire the mums on my way to lift the dahlias yesterday. They’re almost finished - the early sunsets these days really take a chunk out of my working hours…

07/10/2023

I’m missing our flowers today, but excited for our cover cropped and biennial fields to get a nice drink so they can root in before the frost. Our tulips and ranunculus ship to us next week. We would love to hear feedback (comment below) about how we can best show up for our customers next year - farmer’s market, pop ups in Williamsport, bouquet subscription, or a (new) roadside stand at the farm…

05/10/2023

When the dahlias get going, I think that I couldn’t possibly love a flower more. Then the mums get going as the days get cooler and shorter…

04/10/2023

7 years of growing flowers, and the end of the third season at our new home. I finally feel like things have clicked in knowledge, growing abilities, and maybe even a little bit of streamlining and a good setup for continued expansion… The winter cover crop is lush and thick, and a whole tarp-sized field section is fully planted in biennials, tucked in for 2 years of harvests. Next, we’ll dig the dahlias for storage, then sprout and plant our ranunculus.

01/10/2023

30/09/2023

Fall is my favorite.

30/09/2023

Nature is neat and weird.

28/09/2023

Big Brain hack: plant snacks in your garden and then you won’t have to take as many breaks while you work!

“Thornless” raspberries, and little alpine strawberries we grew last year from seed - they have a creamy texture with a slight pineapple flavor and are so lovely…

25/09/2023

3 days ago we sowed our winter cover crop thanks to seeds from our neighbors . It’s already germinated, thanks to the tarp trick we learned from listening to a podcast with . We love the community of knowledge that comes with small-scale farming… Looking forward to even nicer soil and fewer weeds in our 2024 dahlia and perennial beds.

Tarp from
Cover mix: winter triticale, winter peas, Trophy rapeseed

21/09/2023

If we’re measuring fall farm productivity on a scale of seltzer, today was definitely a 5/5… Yesterday I was lamenting how much I thought would never get done this year, today it’s almost all done…

20/09/2023

17/09/2023

We’re deep in the midst of field turnover and daydreaming about our next season. Some of the big plans we have for 2024 are to make our most helpful new addition to the farm into a flower truck for our markets, a spring ranunculus crop, a whole field section of biennials, and expanding our perennials and dahlias. Thanks to all of our supporters for a beautiful 2023 season!

Scythe & Stem is a small scale no-till specialty cut flower farm located just outside of Williamsport Pennsylvania in Lycoming County. Part of the slow flowers movement, we use sustainable soil-focused farming practices to grow our market garden of flowers for our CSA, market, and wholesale cust

15/09/2023

We are this evening with LOADS of flowers and flower goodies. The party starts at 5:30, and this is our last market of the year so come get your fix!!!

06/09/2023

Pulling off a robust set of seedlings for fall planting from seed makes me feel like a growing queen. The first rack of seedlings is fledged, since tomorrow promises to be slightly cooler than the last few demoralizing days in the 90s. 2024’s foxglove, delphinium, sweet William, pennycress and rudbeckia is looking 💯…

01/09/2023

Fresh bouquets today!

30/08/2023

Just dropped off some fresh bouquets !

29/08/2023

Fresh flower drop !

26/08/2023

Everyone agrees it’s a good day for seed-starting…

25/08/2023

We’re all set up , ready to go at 6! We’re tucked in over by the animals (❤️) and the greenhouses…

25/08/2023

We’ll have an abundance of flowers tomorrow evening for 4th Friday, and they’re stunning, if I do say so…

23/08/2023

*Attention Saturday Market Flower Friends* There is no Saturday market this week , BUT we will be at Fourth Friday 6-9 with a ton of flowers, and it looks like it will be an amazing time!

19/08/2023

Sending off to market with a gorgeous abundance today. He’ll be 11-3. We’d absolutely love it if he came home empty-handed…